DNA profiling (also called DNA testing, DNA typing, or genetic fingerprinting) is a technique employed by forensic scientists to assist in the identification of individuals by their respective DNA profiles. DNA profiles may be encrypted sets of numbers that reflect a person's DNA makeup, which can also be used as the person's identifier.
DNA profiling, or genetic profiling, can be used to identify a suspect of a crime or verify the identity of a subject, such as to verify the identity of a victim of a crime. This can enable law enforcement personnel to accurately identify the perpetrator of a crime from a list of suspects, and minimize instances of misidentification. In a battlefield scenario, DNA profiling can identify the opposition in assymetric warfare, identify suspects in raids, identify suspected terrorists, link improvised explosive devices (IED's) to bomb makers, find captured soldiers (such as, e.g., by identifying their DNA from a tissue sample on a vehicle and tracking the vehicle), and unravel a combatant network, to name a few examples.
DNA profiling typically involves sample preparation, processing and analysis. This is ordinarily done in a laboratory setting. Sample preparation is a ubiquitous problem in biological analytical systems. The issue of providing sufficiently purified targets from diverse raw sample types to reliably perform downstream analytical assays is pervasive and covers cell biology, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, food biology, molecular diagnostics, and many other biological and medical assays.
Methods and systems currently available for DNA profiling have various limitations. For instance, sample preparation and analysis systems for DNA profiling are typically bulky and difficult to transport without substantial effort. This makes the use of such systems in the field, such as on a battlefield, difficult and impractical. In addition, current systems and methods are expensive to use and maintain, and genetic profiles take a substantially large amount of time to prepare. In some cases, a genetic profile of a subject is provided in one to two days. This is unappealing in cases in which time is of the essence, such as cases in which law enforcement officials are in pursuit of a suspect or can detain a suspect for only a limited period of time.